Innovative Activity #8: Letter Categories

    The game Letter Categories is a sedentary activity that involves participants using their cognitive skills to think of words to fit specific categories. This game can be focused toward patients in memory care as a memory exercise, but this game can be played with any age group because the categories can be adjusted to fit any group. It can be played with young children to work on vocabulary, or any other group as an icebreaker. Some participants may find this activity boring so the facilitator has to know the group to know if the activity is appropriate.
    The facilitators will give participants several categories that will later be filled in. These might be: color, food, sports team, cereal brand, title of book, etc. The categories given will vary with the group so they will be age appropriate. Facilitators then choose a letter at random out of a bag. Participants must think of a word beginning with that letter to satisfy each category. For example:
        Letter: B
        Food: banana
        Sports team: Buffalo Bills
        Movie: Bad News Bears
        Article of clothing: Bandanna
    There are no winners or losers in this game and it can go on for as many rounds as participants feel like playing. Each round a new letter is chosen and new categories may be chosen to. Participants often enjoy creating their own categories. At the end of each round the facilitator should ask participants for the most unique answer, most common, or if there was a category that was hard to fill.
   Resources needed are paper and writing utensils for all participants, letters on paper for facilitators, and a bowl or bag to pull the letters out of. Facilitators need to be active in running this activity, but can allow participants to help. I learned about this activity when I was in REC 200 and my partner and I needed to facilitate a quick activity. She had played it before and we were able to find similar games online. Other people looking to do this game can find it online under different names, and most people likely know someone who has played this or a similar game before.